Waiting Games
by Takma'rierah
Summary: Set during X-Men: First Class. Shaw captures Charles to lure Erik to him, subjecting Charles to his casual brutality in an attempt to convince Erik to switch sides, but it backfires somewhat. Warnings apply.
1. Part 1

This story was based on this prompt from the 1stclass_kink meme over on LJ:

"Shaw captures and uses Charles to lure Erik to him. At first, he makes Erik watch helplessly as he sexually abuses/tortures Charles. But it doesn't take long before Erik is pushed to the limit when he hears Charles broadcasting his pain."

I started this intending for it to be a 2-3 page, rather porny fanfiction, but it ended up being more of a 29-page roller coaster of suspense, dread, and touching moments. There's some sexual content, yeah, and torture, but it's not really about that so much as about the interactions between the characters themselves.

That said, some **important warnings**:

There is noncon in here, although it's not explicit.

There is also torture, although it's very polite torture.

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I hope you choose to continue reading, and enjoy the ride.

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**i.**

They never saw it coming; sure, Charles and Erik knew they were playing a dangerous game, knew that everything could go horribly wrong, but they'd thought themselves prepared. Hidden. But for all that they boasted mutant pride, the truth was that those who now made their home in Charles' manor still viewed the world in human terms. They didn't account for all the possibilities.

And so it was that Charles had been gone for several hours before anyone really began to get worried. Erik would have liked to believe that he'd been the first to suspect, but the truth was that Sean—Banshee—had to ask him where Charles was before Erik noticed that no, in fact, he hadn't seen him around and didn't know why he had missed the opportunity to push Sean out of a third-story window.

So Erik went to the next person who knew where Charles might be, and asked Raven. She asked Hank and soon enough all of them were in the sitting room, looking around at each other with unsmiling faces.

Charles had vanished.

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**ii.**

"Your name is Charles, correct?" The voice was smooth and masculine; eager and, given the circumstances, unnervingly friendly. Shaw went on to remark, "Another telepath. Wow. 'My cup runneth over,' as they say."

Charles watched as the doctor—_mad scientist_, he thought, although a mad scientist was a silly thing, a grad-school joke, doomsday devices that never got used—paced around him, hands folded at the small of his back, suit immaculate, helmet rather ridiculous. Charles was unbound, standing freely, but he kept still; the only movement he made was to clench and unclench his hands and turn his head. He tried, not for the first time, to access Shaw's mind, but nothing had changed. His thoughts rolled off like water.

"Nothing to say?" Shaw asked. He sounded genuinely curious. "I've heard you were quite the witty one."

Charles lifted his chin a fraction of a centimeter. "I'm just waiting for you to do something other than state the obvious." He was, in fact, terrified; he was not so proud that he couldn't admit it to himself.

Shaw scared him, of course, but the room—which Charles was taking great pains not to examine too closely—frightened him more. It was, as far as he would let himself observe, a dark parody of a doctor's office, or possibly a morgue. There was a slick steel table, gleaming metal knives, sterile white cabinets, and even, he saw with a flash of panicked amusement, a bright orange sharps disposal box. All that metal; for the first time, Charles wished he had Erik's power. Better yet, he wished he had Erik.

The worst part, however, was the walls. They were flawless, seamless mirrors, and he couldn't sense anything through them. That, combined with Shaw's absurd but effective helmet, left Charles' mind silent. It was like being dead.

Shaw circled closer, the dark of his suit making him the natural focal point of the room. Blades reflected his shadow as he passed, and in the mirrored floor his reflection's shoes held the doctor from falling into the endless abyss. "Very well then," Shaw granted. "What would you like me to say that wouldn't be obvious? I could start with where you are, or why you're here." He smiled brightly. "Ask."

Charles exhaled very slowly, considering. Then, refusing to be baited, he inquired, "How did you find me?"

"Oh," Shaw breathed. "I can't take the credit for that. Still, poor question. You're a telepath. You know I have another telepath with me. _You_ can locate people, so it stands to reason that Ms. Frost can do the same. Once we knew where you were, it was a simple matter for someone who can teleport to bring you here. Now ask me why."

Charles remained resolutely silent. He remembered the shock of red hands seizing him from behind; the darkening of his vision as they dissolved into nothingness; the vertigo as they reappeared here, in this room, and then the panic as he found himself totally alone for the first time since he had been a young child.

"Oh, Charles," Shaw chided, pouting mockingly. "So stubborn. Fine. I'll ask." Composing himself so that he appeared to loom proudly, pressing his lips into a fine, disapproving line, he asked in a flawless imitation of Charles' accent: "Why, Dr. Shaw, for what purpose have you brought me here?" Then he broke character and grinned. "There, was that so hard?"

Shaw turned and stared into the mirrored wall, his eyes glinting back at Charles. He picked up a sterile scalpel blade, still wrapped in its packaging, and turned it over in his fingers without opening it. "The truth is, Charles, I didn't bring you here for _your_ sake, precisely. I'll admit: I only want you because of who you know. Still, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy each others' company until then, does it?"

The moment Shaw set down the scalpel, Charles struck; he knew he would likely only have the one chance, so as he lunged forward he directed all of his strength into the fist he threw at Shaw's left kidney, channeling all of his fear and anger.

His fist struck home, but rather than the satisfying crunch of a monster's vital organs beneath a shock of force and a struggle for Shaw's helmet, Charles felt his arm slow inches from contact with the doctor's suit, then finally halt with his knuckles barely brushing fabric. His arm felt weak and numb.

Shaw turned to Charles and grasped his wrist with gentle hands. "My power is to absorb and re-emit energy, Charles. Including kinetic energy." His smile turned brittle and unpleasant. "I'm sure you know that the human body draws power from combustion reactions. Well, so do I."

Shaw squeezed his hands over Charles' wrist and then let go as the telepath gasped, his face turning an ashen gray and his legs collapsing under him. He sagged to the ground, vision narrowing to small window of light, struggling to remain conscious.

"I don't care what happens to you," Shaw continued without pausing to admire his handiwork. "I have no strong desire to hurt you, but I won't care if I have to, either. I only want Erik."

He stepped over to Charles and lifted him up by the front of his shirt with preternatural strength, holding the telepath face-to-face so that Charles could satisfy himself that Shaw was being entirely, dangerously serious. "How you handle yourself will be up to you," the doctor advised. "If, when he comes for you, you look worse than you feel, you will have won. On the other hand, if you insist on showing strength, I'll have to ensure that you look just as bad regardless of your heroics. It's your choice."

With that, he tossed Charles onto the steel table with the ease of someone throwing a discarded jacket over the back of a chair, and by the time Charles' head had stopped spinning, the room was empty. He was alone with his thoughts.

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**iii.**

Erik knew firsthand how hard it was to find Shaw when the doctor didn't want to be found. He looked to the task before him and thought of all those years spent following rumor to rumor, threatening, cajoling, killing; those things took work, but not only work. They required him to know every duplicitous strand of Shaw's great web of business partners, former employees, and drinking buddies.

He found himself going over that web in his mind and realizing that, in the weeks since he'd last taken it out and groomed over it, the strands had grown dusty and disused. Many were missing entirely, torn with neglect. The spider at the center was nowhere to be seen.

So it was with dismay that Erik set to retrieving atlases from Charles' library, recalling coordinates of past sightings, and making soft-voiced phone calls he wouldn't allow the others to overhear.

He was surprised when, as he reached yet again for the telephone, it rang of its own volition. Erik paused as it lapsed into silence, and then snatched it as the phone began its second ring. Perhaps one of his informants had remembered something useful.

"Hello?" he inquired, preparing to be deluged with quivering pleas for mercy and assurances of the caller's usefulness.

"Erik," the voice at the other end breathed. Erik froze, his knuckles white against the phone, eyes distant as if he could see, somewhere in the distance, where Shaw spoke into his own telephone "By now you know that I have Charles. I know you're looking for me, and I'm prepared to tell you where I am."

"Where," Erik growled, not feeling disposed toward pleasantries.

"Your anger is as refreshingly honest as ever, Erik," Shaw told him, "but I'm afraid it's a little more complicated than that. You're going to come alone, you won't be able to use your powers against me, and you're going to make a choice."

"Where are you?" Erik repeated, freely allowing his scorn to seep through the mouthpiece.

"All in good time," Shaw promised. "As you know, I have Charles, and I suspect he may be in a bad way soon. _How_ bad, exactly, depends on how quickly you arrive, but once you're here, you can choose to send him on his way if you like. I'll never trouble him again, and you'll stay by my side, helping me with my goals. I don't believe they're so different from yours, after all."

Fury burst like lightning behind Erik's eyes. "I'll never work with you," he hissed.

"Fair enough," Shaw remarked, his voice light and careless. "Then when you come to visit you may watch what I do to your friend before he dies. He is your friend, isn't he? I understand you've had very little time for that sort of thing in the years since you abandoned me."

Erik held in his breath, silent; every part of him wanted to lash out, to tell Shaw to go fuck himself, to find Shaw and make a crater in the ground a mile across, to rip him apart with the powers he had awaked. Every part of him, except for one traitorous little corner of his mind that pointed out that he could never live with himself if he left Charles to Shaw's mercy, or allowed him to be killed in the course of his retribution.

He exhaled, forcing the rage back, into the deep pit where he kept it when he had no use for its claws. "Where should I go?" he asked.

"Ah, good, you do still have manners. Not far, to answer your question; there is an abandoned salt mine in the upper peninsula of Michigan…" Shaw explained how Erik should come to him as he listened mutely, eyes narrowed. Erik didn't need to write down the directions for how to reach Shaw, because he always had room in his memory when it came to revenge. What he needed, but couldn't ask for, was a path for getting out again, Charles at his side.

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**iv.**

Every movement Charles made caused his head to swim dangerously, but he slid himself off of the table as soon as he was able, cringing at his bruises. He guessed that this was a preview of how he'd feel when he was eighty, tottering around sore and weary, but the humor vanished as the tip of one shoe caught on the other and nearly sent him sprawling.

Charles grasped for the edge of the table and hung for a moment, panting, before he could lever himself up again. He strained to hear if anyone was coming, strained to _feel_ if anyone was coming, but there was nothing but the anticipatory silence of a room with intent, and the harsh noises of his own breathing as Charles' body fought to fuel its cells. He felt cold and sick, but he forced himself to ignore it because he was sure, despite his current inability to read any mind that mattered, that he'd feel more than just ill if he did nothing.

Finally he was close enough to the counter to throw himself at it, and once there Charles propped himself up and snatched at the packaged scalpel Shaw had set down on a little metal tray. He felt for the sharp end and tore at the paper with fussy fingers and short nails, until he could peel back the wrapping just enough to expose the blade.

Then, with a last glance around the room, Charles stepped back to the table and sank to the floor, leaning back against the solid pedestal beneath the narrow sheet of steel. Setting the partially opened scalpel on his knee, Charles folded up the hem of his sweater vest all the way around his torso, forming a sort of narrow pocket. He tucked the knife in over his belly, which was just flat enough to hide the stiff outline of his weapon.

These actions nearly drew out the last of his energy, and the telepath let his head drop back against the table with a thump. Charles' eyes fluttered closed, but just for a few seconds, because he couldn't afford to rest.

There was a bright light in the center of the ceiling, its light reflected over and over in the mirrored walls and various instruments of what would, in a kinder world, be medicine. Its brilliance was offensive in its intensity, and it bleached out any errant color, but Charles turned his attention to it for a different reason.

In order to work, the light needed electricity, and in order to transmit electricity, there needed to be wires. Wires required holes; only small holes, true, but if there was a chance—

Charles pushed his awareness at a gap in the room's defenses that he only hoped was real, and was rewarded with a flicker of mental sound so faint as to be despairing in its uselessness. Still, it was something, and Charles intended to use it to his advantage if he could. So, frowning with concentration, he focused on refining his reed straw, on making a message narrow enough to pass through the tiny gap and reach its recipient.

The sound of thoughts and feelings rose to a sudden crescendo, and Charles had a moment of fleeting, irrational certainty that somehow he was able to overcome the limitations of his narrow capacity to influence the outside world, that against all odds he could reach his powers through an electrical socket and still be a force to be reckoned with, but reality slid into his awareness with the hushed whisper of an opening door and the sharp noise of dress shoes on glass.

Shaw had returned.

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**v.**

The things that Erik took with him were few in number. He wore casual clothing: just his black pants, black turtleneck, and leather jacket. The pants and jacket pockets he stocked with screws and nails, but only because it would look suspicious if he arrived without a weapon. He carried cash for food and for buying a flight to Madison, because he knew without checking that no one in New York flew to the upper peninsula of Michigan. From there, an airfield Shaw had specified, where a pilot waited to fly him into the deep woods of the Canadian Shield.

Erik also brought with him a single silver coin, not for spending.

He considering bringing help, and if he had been planning to raid the place, he would have; Erik was, however, walking in openly, commanded to come alone, and he trusted Shaw's depravity enough to know that there would be consequences for Charles if he didn't. The kids were loud and unsubtle, with the possible exception of Raven, but even if she hid herself well he would still give her away with his mind.

Still, Erik paused for long enough to scribe a note and close it gently between the pages of the atlas he'd been consulting. If Raven found it and followed, it would be a welcome surprise.

He looked one last time around the library, and breathed in the scent of books and wood as if gathering it to his chest for protection. Then Erik left.

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**vi.**

Charles rose to his feet with a resolve he didn't feel, determined not to greet his captor from the floor. He cast his mind back through the entryway, found someone nearby, and took over their consciousness—but even as he did Charles felt his control slipping away, his mark growing confused and rebellious, and then the door was closed and there was silence.

Except for Shaw.

"Ah, Charles, you seem to have recovered quickly," the doctor remarked brightly. "You look a little gray, though. You'll be glad to know that Erik seemed very happy to hear you were alive, and between you and me, I think he'll choose to let you live when he gets here. At the expense of staying himself, of course."

"You don't think he'll kill you?" Charles asked, voice flat and incredulous.

A flicker of doubt seemed to flash across Shaw's obscured face before his confidence re-established itself. "Now, Charles, no need to be a—" His eyes darted down to the tray on the counter and he frowned. "Give me the knife, Charles."

Normally, the telepath would have reached out, touched Shaw's mind to decide his course of action; faced with a blind choice, Charles paused, unsure whether to lie or hand over the scalpel. For a moment he nearly panicked, every muscle screaming to lash out and attack, but he stilled his hands before he could make that mistake. Shaw would know that he was lying; Charles rankled at falling for the trap, realizing in hindsight that the scalpel had clearly been a test.

Slowly, deliberately, Charles drew the blade out of his vest and held it out, keeping his face carefully blank.

"Thank you," Shaw said, retrieving it. He examined the scalpel for a moment, his lips thinning in faint disapproval. "This isn't sterile anymore," he commented, and tucked it into his pocket.

Charles felt a moment of relief, assured by that familiar sentiment, but his throat caught as Shaw held out his hand once more. "That's all I had," he protested, mouth drying as if it knew something he didn't.

"Your hand, Charles," Shaw clarified, beckoning impatiently with his fingers.

The telepath stared at Shaw's hand for a second and then reached out his own hesitantly, as if he were placing it into a bear trap. But the doctor's grasp was gentle, almost reverent, and Charles shivered.

"You've never been hurt by anyone, have you?" Shaw asked, a faint note of amazement in his words. "At least, not badly."

Charles didn't reply, but his confusion must have been evident, because Shaw gave his fingers a little squeeze to illustrate his point. "You gave me your dominant hand, Charles. Either you knew I wouldn't take the other, or you're so trusting that it didn't even cross your mind."

Clearing his throat, Charles tugged at his hand, carefully so as not to provoke Shaw. "Could I have it back, please?"

Shaw peered into Charles' eyes and shook his head, smiling as if he'd seen some exotic African bird on his back porch. "Marvelous," he whispered. "I almost hope I get to keep you. But to answer your question, no, I'm afraid not, and perhaps you will learn a lesson from this."

He pulled Charles a little closer, still clasping his hand firmly, his expression mentorly. "Do you know how much energy the earth receives from the sun, Charles?"

"Not precisely, no," the telepath replied, keeping his voice steady, beginning to suspect where this was going.

"It's the equivalent of more than six and a half million Hiroshima bombs per hour," Shaw explained, his smile turning worshipful. "All that energy, raining down on us all day, most of it unused. You can imagine that for me, it is a veritable feast."

Charles' hand began to feel very warm where Shaw's fingers touched him, and there was sweat there; his own, he thought. "I'd like my hand back, please," he repeated, more insistently.

Shaw's eyes had no warmth at all in them any more. "Let me show you the sun, Charles," he urged, leaning forward; and then Charles' hand was _burning_ and he made no attempt to be polite, just pulled and pulled at his hand, grabbing his own wrist for better leverage; but Shaw didn't move an inch and he just _stood there_ watching Charles, a small joyless smile on his face, and good god, was that the feel of his _skin_ peeling off?

Finally the doctor let him go, and Charles, suddenly freed, stumbled back into the table, catching himself before he could fall, cradling his hand near his chest but unable to touch it. His skin, he saw with relief, was still there, but it was an angry red and already starting to blister.

Sneering a little, Shaw backed away and adjusted his sleeves. "They're only second-degree burns, Charles," he chided. "Have a little composure. In about two weeks you'll hardly be able to see them any more."

Charles gritted his teeth and forced himself to let go of his wrist and stand up straight. "I'm beginning to understand how Erik came to be as he is," he remarked, and it wasn't a compliment.

Shaw's smile was fond. "Now, that was a much more elaborate project than this."

"Is that how you view this?" Charles asked, accusatory. "As work?"

The smile faded. "Of course," Shaw replied. "It's the most difficult work; that of molding a human being to your desires. You fail to appreciate the control I have here, Charles; for instance, that burn on your hand is even, superficial, and in the long run, harmless. That's because I have control; a control Erik has barely mastered. Just imagine how bad it might have been for you if you'd succeeded at striking me with that scalpel—why, if I were like Erik, you'd have no hand left at all."

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**vii.**

Shaw began to unbutton his coat, and caught Charles' suspicious scrutiny. "This is hot work," he explained with a grin. "I don't want to stain my jacket."

The last of the moisture in Charles' mouth seemed to evaporate. "You can't burn my entire body," he pointed out.

"No?" the doctor asked, looking curious. "And why not?"

His breath caught before Charles realized that Shaw was only fishing for an answer. "Because you don't want to cause permanent damage," he replied. "Burned skin is vulnerable to infection, which could disfigure or kill me."

"Good point," Shaw conceded, folding his jacket over the arm of a mobile operating tray, his voice perfectly neutral. "But why wouldn't I want to you to be disfigured?"

Charles paused, and watched the doctor's hands as they ghosted over several sharp instruments, touching none of them. "I don't know. Why?"

"Taking the easy way out, are you?" Shaw remarked, but continued patiently, "When Erik comes, he'll know that your injuries are superficial. He'll also know that they're causing you great pain, and the poor man with his poor, atrophied heart will think that he's being heroic when he gives himself over to me to set you free. Then, after a few weeks go by, I'll show him a photo of you, all healed up and healthy, and Erik will be satisfied that he made the right decision."

The doctor disclosed all of this with an attitude of supreme genius, and Charles couldn't help but gape a little in disbelief, understanding fully, for the first time, that Shaw _truly believed_ that his plan was infallible, and that Erik was only a lost little boy throwing a temper tantrum. This was not, however, the sort of madness that could be reasoned with, so Charles held his tongue.

Shaw walked over to the edge of the steel table and pulled out a shelf, exactly the same as a real doctor's office table, and Charles had to stop himself from giving into high, strained peals of laughter at Shaw's very professional gesture instructing him to sit.

The doctor must have seen some of this untimely mirth on Charles' face, because he frowned. "Do take a seat, Charles," he insisted. "I assure you, this part will hurt very little."

"If I'm good, will you give me a sticker?" Charles retorted, nearly crossing his arms before his hand gave another sharp throb in warning.

Shaw did not appear to find this amusing. "No," he said. "But I might only break a _few_ of your ribs."

Charles was beginning to see how this was, indeed, not very funny at all, so he stepped up onto the rubber grain of the shelf and perched at the edge of the table, which was very hard and uncomfortable against the bruises he had sustained from contact with that same surface earlier. He immediately missed being on his feet.

The doctor pulled over the operating tray and reached into his jacket pocket, retrieving the scalpel. He stripped off the paper wrapping and let it flutter down into the garbage bin.

The light caught at the blade from every angle. "I thought you'd decided that it wasn't sterile any more," Charles commented as casually as he was able, watching as Shaw adjusted his grip on it.

"It's not, really," Shaw acknowledged, and smiled, "but then, who's keeping track? Well, you are, of course, but don't worry. I'm sure you know of dozens of grad students who paw all over equipment that's meant to be sterile." Shaw reached his free hand out to Charles' head.

The telepath leaned back, otherwise keeping still. "Yes, and most of them ended up with contaminated samples in one way or another."

Shaw dropped his hand back to his leg and chuckled. "Oh, Charles; I respect that you don't attempt to scream and hit at me, but you must know that shying away isn't going to help you either." He stepped forward swiftly and caught the back of Charles' neck, his thumb pressing in below the telepath's ear and forcing his face up into the light.

The doctor's voice dropped to a murmur. "This is a _very_ delicate business, you see," he said, looking over Charles' features with a critical eye, "and I would hate to cut anything vital. This," he waggled the blade close to Charles' face, "is very sharp, remember."

The scalpel blade flickered out, and Charles felt the impact more than anything, and then a wet trickle working its way down the side of his neck. A moment later, a dull ache set in. "There, you see," Shaw breathed, looking into Charles' wide blue eyes, "barely any pain at all."

It took an extraordinarily long time for Shaw to make what must have only been a half dozen small cuts to his face, each one apparently factoring into some grander composition that the doctor had in mind. He had, however, told the truth, and compared to the burning of Charles' hand it hardly hurt at all, except for a snag of pain as Shaw nicked his ear, and the stinging sensation of blood dripping into his left eye from a shallow cut over his eyebrow.

Then, with careful consideration, Shaw took his thumb and smeared it over Charles' skin, daubing some of it onto his pale blue shirt. He stepped back and observed his work. "Good," he commented. "Head wounds bleed a lot. We'll let those go for a while before I stitch them up. Especially the ear; that'll make a nice little notch unless we get it closed."

Charles rolled his neck hesitantly and brought his undamaged hand up to his face to wipe his eye. He stared at his fingers mutely, licking his dry lips as he tried to reconcile the brightness of the blood with Shaw's cavalier mood, able to conclude only that, truly, the doctor was mad.

"Now, you may want to get on the floor," Shaw advised, his manner all fatherly concern.

Charles gazed at him in shock. "Whatever for?" he asked, his bloodied fingers hanging guiltily before him, like those of a child who'd snuck his fingers into the frosting.

The doctor shrugged, scraping beneath his fingernails with a bit of his shirt. "You can start out there of your own will, or you'll end up there when I hit you. I thought it might be a bit less embarrassing if you just laid yourself down." He gave Charles a slightly awkward smile, as if he were terribly sorry for the inconvenience he was causing the telepath.

Charles just couldn't think of an answer to that, so he wasn't very surprised when the flat of Shaw's hand collided with his face, enough force behind it to send him crashing to the floor. _Now_ the cuts on his face hurt, as they tore along the edges and sent fresh blood pattering onto the mirror below. Charles stared at the splatters dimly, his head reeling and his stomach roiling, his thoughts turning, unavoidably, to how unpredictable people were when he couldn't read their minds.

Then Shaw's perfectly shined shoe found his ribcage, and Charles didn't even think to throw in a plea for mercy among the litany of noises he made as Shaw fulfilled his earlier promise: he only broke a _few_ of Charles' ribs.

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	2. Part 2

Yeah, that's right, I'm a shameless self-promoting Wisconsinite who puts her state in everything. Also it is true that, at one point, you could conduct pretty much all of your business in Milwaukee while speaking German. (Not as recently as when this takes place, though.)

In case you're unfamiliar with the term, a "yooper" is someone from the upper peninsula of Michigan, or the UP.

It was pointed out to me that I made a serious faux pas in this chapter, referring to "Polish concentration camps." This is wrong, as it implies that the concentration camps _were _Polish, and of course they were not. I freely admit that this is because I am utterly ignorant of most history, and have changed it.

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**viii.**

The plane to Michigan was a simple, small two-seater, and the pilot greeted Erik so warmly that he knew immediately that the man had nothing to do with Shaw's plots. He introduced himself with the surname Eshelman, and when Erik eventually, out of politeness, inquired where he was from, the man replied, "Milwaukee. …But my parents are from Germany. Came over during the war."

Erik nodded. It was not unexpected; in fact, he'd been to Milwaukee on business more than once. Based on the pilot's appearance, Erik surmised that the Eshelman family managed what his could not, and for a while he tolerated the man asking him questions in accented German.

His answers nonetheless grew increasingly terse as Wisconsin droned by beneath them, and by the time that they stopped to refuel Erik had become as silent and brooding as the towering pines, and the pilot was resigned to treat him as ambulatory cargo.

Finally, just when it seemed that they had left civilization entirely, the plane began to lose altitude, the little engine whining as they descended into a private airfield between two glacier-rounded hills.

Erik unfolded his long legs and stretched them down to the tarmac, looking around at the low, pale gray buildings. It was all very ordinary, and he adjusted his jacket over his shoulders because he could not quite bring himself to shiver.

"Hey," a voice called, and Erik turned to see the pilot leaning out the door. "Don't let these yoopers give you shit, eh?"

Erik smiled an acknowledgement and held up his hand in a cursory wave as the plane began to taxi toward the tiny hanger. Then his smile vanished, and he started to walk in the direction of the largest building.

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**ix.**

The guards let Erik through easily, stopping him only just long enough to ask his name before opening doors. There weren't many of them, and he could have killed them all easily, in their squat metal building; but he didn't, because Charles was still there, somewhere. Still alive, he hoped.

Eventually he came to a freight elevator, and Shaw's telepath unfolded herself from a plastic chair Erik was surprised she even deigned to look at. Her lascivious smile went unreturned.

"Charles?" he asked, voice flat and dangerous.

"All in good time, dear," she told him, a mocking pout on her lips. "We haven't even said hello yet."

Erik's eyes were dark and hooded under the bright industrial lamps, and he didn't give her the satisfaction of an answer.

The woman sighed, her breath a cold breeze even from where Erik stood, and drifted closer. "Very well, then. Take that _metal_ out of your pockets and I'll take you to see Dr. Shaw."

Reaching into his coat pockets, Erik drew out the screws and nails, using only the power of his fingers to do so. He held them out between them both and tipped it all onto the floor.

The telepath tutted over the mess, and tilted her head. Erik felt her then, probing in his mind, and he tried to keep his other stash out of his thoughts. "Your pants pocket too, Erik," she commanded teasingly. When he showed no sign of obeying, she curved her lips at him, slid up against Erik's side, and dipped her fingers into his pocket.

He turned his head sharply, piercing her with an intense stare, and for a moment Erik imagined capturing her lips, pinning her against the wall, and seeing just what her mutation entailed.

She gave him a look of pure disgust, jabbed his thigh with her diamond fingers, and confiscated the last of the hardware he'd taken from Charles' manor. She then refused to look at him the entire ride down.

The earth swallowed them, and Erik turned his thoughts toward idle and frankly rather improbable fantasies every time he suspected Shaw's telepath of trying to read him. He kept a small, hard smile on his face, not because he found humor in it, but because she hadn't searched his socks.

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**x.**

The underground compound was surprisingly dingy, given what Erik knew about Shaw's obsession with cleanliness and gleaming surfaces. Still, as they walked deeper into the facility, passing rooms full of workers, scientists, and sleek computers, Shaw's presence began to creep into the tunnels, like a pristine white cancer.

Erik watched this progress with a grim fascination; he had always known that Shaw had power, that he had long since moved beyond experimenting on helpless children in German concentration camps. He hadn't realized that the doctor was _this_ entrenched, however, and as they passed unmarked doors with frosted glass windows he couldn't help but wonder, with a barely-perceptible deepening of his frown, what subjects Shaw had found to replace him.

Eventually they reached a fine gilded door, and Erik felt the beast that lived coiled around his heart raise its scaly head. He knew, without being told, that Shaw was behind this door, with Charles no doubt nearby. He imagined, for a moment, Charles strapped to a chair, Charles forced to observe as—but no, those were his own memories. Doubtlessly Shaw had grown far more creative in the intervening years.

Behind the gilded door lay an elegant room, the floor soft with thick, ice-blue carpeting, the walls hung with paintings. And there, in a leather office chair taller than any back that could ever conceivably lean into it…

"_Herr Doktor_," Erik said, and absolutely none of the prestige carried by the title made it into the words he spoke.

Shaw looked up from his fortress of a desk. "Ah, Erik! So good to see you again. You're even dressed in real clothing this time." He began to rise, and paused as he noticed a shiny black pen with his name on it start to rise with him. Shaw gave a pointed glance to his telepath, and in an instant Erik was grimacing with the pain of her claws in his head. He thought that maybe now, this time, he could manage to work past it, but Erik let the pen fall back to the desk with a rattle.

"I was hoping we could have a conversation without any melodramatics," Shaw told him, a note of wry amusement creeping into his voice.

Erik's eyes fixed onto him, dark and unblinking. "I'll see Charles first," he stated. It was a fact, not a question.

The doctor grinned and nodded, picking up an odd-looking metallic helmet that didn't register to Erik's gift. "Of course, of course. You arrived just in time; I was starting to think you weren't going to come."

Accepting this for the meaningless chatter that it was, Erik followed as Shaw led him down a short corridor behind the desk, the diamond woman trailing after them with every appearance of boredom. Dim blue light filled the end of the hallway, and Erik recognized the source as being the transparent side of a one-way mirror, set into a door.

He stood back as Shaw pressed the button to open the door; he didn't want to look through the window. Erik didn't want to see Charles if he couldn't be seen in turn; not when he had no way of knowing whether…

The door slid open, and an antiseptic smell filled the hallway, mingling with the heavier, iron odor of blood. Shaw had barely stepped out of the way before Erik brushed past him, leather jacket rasping against dark suit.

He froze as soon as he was through the doorway, standing straight and stiff, some unrelated part of his mind storing whatever taunt Shaw was making for future reference, and all of the rest of his attention focused on categorizing what he saw because he couldn't afford to react just yet.

Erik took note of the room; mirrored all around, a modern version of the room Shaw had favored all those years ago. A prison for a telepath, he surmised, although the amount of metal on display rendered the room no danger to his own abilities. His eyes darted over the tools; they looked mostly unused, except for a shadowy shape in a biohazard-orange box that felt to his powers like a knife. He looked over the smears of dried blood on the floor, and allowed his eyes to, finally, follow the trail of those smudges back to their source.

"Charles," Erik said, unable to voice the concern he so desperately wanted to while in the presence of Shaw, who would doubtlessly be watching for such clues. He could barely breathe, for a moment, until Charles shifted and peered out at him.

"Erik?" His voice was thin and bewildered, and Erik felt something in his chest threaten to splinter at the sight of Charles crumpled against a steel operating table (a table he could rip off its podium in a second), stained with his own blood and clearly injured. His immaculate, expensive shoes, tangled together, somehow made Charles look even more pathetic and out of place in the sharp, unfriendly room.

Erik forced himself to an unreadable calm with effort, and managed to take the last few steps toward Charles at an unhurried pace. Then he knelt down on one knee and leaned over his friend, and, now close enough to avoid being overheard by Shaw, allowed his careful composure to slip.

"Oh, Charles," he breathed, looking over the telepath's body with a practiced eye, following his eye with feather-light touches from his fingers. Broken ribs. Fractured ulna, probably, and some second-degree burns. Charles' face was swollen and purpling on one side, etched with stitched-closed cuts that had bloodied the man's face all the way down to the dark stain on his shirt collar.

Erik relaxed, just a hair; Charles would be fine, for now at least, but the sight of those cuts, doubtlessly caused only to be stitched up again, stirred the rage inside of him, unexpectedly fierce and strong. He was aware that he must look terrifying in his anger, and didn't want to upset Charles, but he couldn't look away from the blood at the neck of his friend's shirt, and, almost unconsciously, he reached out a hand to hold the crusted lapel between his fingers.

"Erik, my friend," Charles was saying, had been murmuring for a while now, "Don't fall for it. Don't trust him. He's crazy, Erik."

"I know," Erik replied softly, pinning Charles' elusive gaze with effort. "Charles," he urged, "Charles," until the telepath met his eyes. Erik moved his hand to brush his thumb over Charles' unmarked eyebrow, pulling up his eyelid until Erik could see for himself that Charles' pupils were responding normally, though they were a bit small.

"You have the best bedside manner," Charles whispered, and Erik patted his cheek gently, granting him a small smile. If the telepath could still tell jokes, it was a good sign.

Still, Shaw was going to pay for this, in one way or another, and probably involving quite a lot of blood. "I'll fix this, Charles," Erik muttered, leaning closer to him, speaking almost to his hair. "I'll get you out of here."

He started to pull back, but Charles' good hand caught his jacket in a flash, and Erik stared down at him, surprised. Charles' eyes were unexpectedly clear and sure, even though his fractured arm must have hurt terribly. "Don't rise to his bait," he warned. "Don't let him goad you into giving up your life for me."

Erik didn't know what he could say to this, hadn't expected Charles to try and sacrifice himself, so he simply nodded and settled his fingers over the telepath's wrist as a small, wordless assurance. Then Charles let him go and looked away again, and Erik rose to his feet, schooling his face into a mask of indifference.

He turned, and stared straight into Shaw's eyes. "Let's talk," Erik suggested.

.

.

**xi.**

The pen had vanished from the desk when they returned to it, Erik saw, and he was surprised to realize that very little in the room was made of metal, except for the opulent door, the socket of the light bulb above, and the prison down the hall. Still, he did have materials at hand, should he require them, and he tried not to think about Charles back there in that room, and about how it must be like losing some vital part of himself to not be able to use his telepathy; like going deaf, or blind.

Erik had never been in a similar situation, since the modern world practically _worshipped_ metal, but he could imagine a few circumstances where even he could be deprived. While deep underground and surrounded by rock, for example.

Shaw sat himself back down in his chair and pulled the helmet off his head, running his hand back through his mane of hair. "There, that's better," he remarked to himself. There was no corresponding chair at the other side of the desk; anyone who wished to speak to Shaw had to stand. The woman telepath stood next to Shaw's chair, a little mocking smile on her red lips.

The doctor leaned forward and folded his hands together. "Now, Erik. You know what choices I'm going to offer you, so what'll it be? Stay, or go? Allow your friend to leave, or let him die slowly?"

"I would prefer to go," Erik pronounced carefully, "and take Charles with me, and leave you here, dead."

Shaw sat back and made a clucking noise with his mouth. "Poor, impetuous Erik," he mused. "After all these years, you still expect the rules to be broken just for you. Metal can be broken, Erik; minds can be broken, bones can be broken. My rules cannot be. You can have one… Or the other. Not both."

"Charles isn't part of this game, Sebastian. He doesn't share our history."

If he had still worn glasses, Erik thought, Shaw would have taken them off to polish them. "No, he _is_ part of this 'game,' as you say. He made himself part of it when he chose to come after me. It's not my fault you don't choose your companions based on their strength of character."

Erik felt the familiar anger rising to the surface again, but he pushed it back down firmly. Anger was Shaw's tool, and if Erik used it now, Shaw would have control over him before the satisfaction of a well-executed death threat could even sink in. "He's not weak; he's a non-combatant."

Shaw waved a hand. "Same thing, essentially. It'll make it harder for him to hold in his screams as he bleeds to death." _If it happened that quickly_, Erik finished silently.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. "If I stay?"

Beaming, Shaw sprang forward in his chair. "Oh, well, that's another story! We take your Charles up to the surface, that pilot flies him back to Madison, and before he knows it he'll be home free, surrounded by all of his other idealists in his natural habitat."

"And then where would we stand?" Erik asked.

"Why as partners, of course," Shaw explained. "Colleagues. You work by my side, using the abilities I trained you to use, and I'll give you your own continent all to yourself after the humans finish blowing each other up."

Erik scrutinized the man in front of him, but Shaw looked the same as he ever did: impeccably honest, even when lying. Not that Erik didn't believe the doctor's words; no, he had every confidence that Shaw would keep that promise if he were able. It was the fine print where Shaw excelled.

"What happens until then?" Erik insisted, his hands curling into fists.

"Well," the doctor began, a little crooked smile on his face, "I have rooms set aside for you down here. They've been ready for a long time; all wooden furniture, no nails, no metal in any room nearby… They're really quite rustic, actually; you might find them comfortable."

No metal. Erik's mind went blank as he tried to imagine living without having metal on hand, but he didn't know where that would leave him. It'd been so long since he'd defined himself in any other way besides the hunt for Shaw and his affinity with metal. If he lost both at once…

On the other hand, he could let Charles die. He could also kill the man himself, and save him the misery of death at Shaw's hands. It would be easy; with Charles unable to sense anything outside of his prison, Erik could even save him the pain of knowing he was about to die. Erik would then be free to leave and kill Shaw at his leisure.

But… The thought of shoving hard steel through the back of Charles' skull and then turning around to use those same powers against the doctor left an ashen taste in his mouth. Erik was strong, and had endured pain before; he could survive where Charles would certainly fail. He could bide his time, waiting for Shaw to slip, always knowing where to find him.

However, at Shaw's side Erik would no longer have the element of surprise, and of course he would have to work for the doctor in the meantime.

Shaw sighed loudly and crossed his legs, tipping his chair back. "Your brooding is giving me a headache. How about we make things simple? Simple-_er_. You mentioned games, so how about we play one now? It's your favorite, I believe."

Erik's eyebrows furrowed, and he parted his lips to say something, but Shaw cut him off, setting his hand on top of his gray helmet. "It goes like this: I count to three. You'll make a choice before I reach that number, or I'll go back and visit with your friend for a while."

Erik felt a deadly calm settle over himself. "You don't get to play that game twice with me, _Herr Doktor_."

Shaw gave him a little crooked smile, unconcerned from the midst of his chair. "_One_," he began, pointedly, and Erik knew that he wouldn't be able to talk the doctor out of it.

Revenge on his own terms, or at his convenience? Now, or later? He inclined toward walking free, but hadn't he been chasing Shaw around the world long enough?

"_Two_," Shaw continued, studying his nails closely.

He didn't want to spend time around Shaw, waiting to endure new horrors, playing nice with the man who killed his mother, but…

…But this wasn't only about revenge. Charles was in the picture as well; poor, idealistic Charles, building sand castles below the high-tide line.

"I'll stay," Erik declared, and then stood frozen, because in that same instant Shaw had finished the countdown, and the doctor was staring at him with cold, hard eyes.

"I said I'd stay," he repeated, but Shaw didn't stop to listen to him, just scooped up his helmet and strode down the corridor. Erik paused for just an instant before he rushed off after him, reaching for Shaw's arm, but before he could grab hold Erik gasped and stumbled into the wall, his thoughts echoing with a screeching akin to nails on a chalkboard.

Shaw paused before opening the door, settling the helmet over his head. "You don't get to break the rules, Erik," he advised, "but perhaps in time you'll learn from them."

.

.

**xii.**

Charles sat in his sterile solitude and quietly missed Erik. Half an hour ago, he'd been okay; had missed everyone equally but not too badly since he couldn't think of anyone he'd left while on bad terms, but once Erik had come and gone, Charles began to really miss him in particular.

Charles was also pretty certain that he was pathetic.

Still, when Erik had come through the door, Charles had felt a lot better, if disappointed that his friend had put himself in danger on his behalf. He hadn't felt so much better that he was willing to leap up and embrace Erik, or even really move much at all, but the older man had seemed an island of calm, despite the fury Charles could feel roiling beneath the surface.

That was another thing; Erik's mind had been reassuringly bright and vivid, like the taste of food to a starving man, and while Charles hadn't wanted to impose any of his own feelings of fear and pain onto the other man, he'd gladly taken in Erik's anger. Not to feel for himself, because Charles was perfectly capable of feeling anger on his own, but because it was nice to know that someone cared about him enough to be driven to rage at his situation, and could be bothered to check over even his minor hurts as if they were worth retribution, even if Charles didn't, strictly speaking, agree with the sentiment.

But these thoughts were dangerous; it was unwise to think of Erik in terms of the action-movie hero he'd so strongly resembled when he stepped into the room. A movie hero was an idea; a person who could never be hurt, unlike his friend. Even with that in mind, it had taken nearly everything Charles had not to ask Erik to save him, to instead send him on his way, and the grudging respect he'd seen in Erik's eyes had almost been worth what Charles imagined would come once he left.

Had Erik left?

Charles inclined his head back, wincing as his face hurt, as his ribs hurt, as every bit of him chimed in to let him know that yes, he was still falling to pieces. His mind was above all that, however, at least for now, and he focused on reaching out into the world through what he was now referring to, privately, as his periscope.

It was hard to find specific people this way, hard to recognize them; harder to read any specific thoughts about them. Charles tried, though, and he encountered a number of minds in the vicinity: one that was cold and sharp, easier to see than the rest, but which he shied away from; one slick and full of jagged points, that he could have recognized as Shaw even if he'd never read the man before; and finally, one mind that was troubled and furious, one that had grown familiar to him over the past several days.

"No, damn you," Charles muttered to himself. "Why are you still here? I told you to go away."

But then something changed; Erik's distant mind flashed with fear, with betrayal, and finally, was overcome by discordant noise, sharp and unpleasant when echoed in Charles' already tender head. Something was happening; something undoubtedly bad for one or both of them.

Charles thought he heard noises, beyond the smooth, seamless panel of the door, and he tensed in preparation, watching his reflection nervously.

His reflection didn't move as the door slid out from underneath it; then Shaw stood in its stead, helmet firmly in place. Charles could feel Erik out there, too, and in a moment he knew everything that Erik did; yes, this was going to be bad.

_Erik, just go,_ Charles urged, fighting against the surge of automatic refusal the other man responded with; Erik was sure that he had to save Charles. _No. Just go. Don't force me to make you, Erik,_ but then it was a moot point because the door was sliding back over Erik's wide, worried eyes; it was the most ruffled Charles had ever seen him, and that did not bode well.

Shaw strode up to Charles and grabbed hold of his arms; Charles tried to prepare himself for it, but when Shaw pulled him to his feet and dropped him back on the end of the table, he couldn't prevent the ragged scream that tore from his throat as his ribs moved contrary to their will, and he couldn't prevent the darkness that dropped over his senses as he passed out.

.

.

.

.


	3. Part 3

Confrontation, and ending. The confrontation scene was difficult because for one thing, it's an action scene, which is always hard to write, but mostly because I wanted it to be different from the fight in the movie without straying too far from the central idea.

The ending was relatively easy, since it was basically all ideas I'd had when I started writing and I spent the whole time wanting to get to these scenes.

* * *

><p>.<p>

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**xiii.**

The blackness only lasted for a few seconds at most, and then Charles was gasping for breath; was not gasping for breath, actually, because that made it worse. Shaw's hands on his shoulders steadied him, and also trapped him as Shaw edged in closer, stepping up with one foot between Charles' own and swaying in near to his face.

Shaw's breath puffed over him, stale and warm. "Erik's requested a show, just to prove I'm serious, so play along nicely," and Shaw could have chosen no better words to ensure Charles' rebellion.

The telepath kicked out with his feet, but Shaw only moved closer, until their thighs touched and he was too close to be kicked. Charles reached for Shaw's helmet with his bad hand out of habit, and when that hand received a sharp slap for the trouble he gasped with the unexpected pain of it, and then found himself breathless as agony washed down his ribs.

Shaw took the opportunity to tangle one hand in Charles' hair and lean him back until he had to busy his hands to support himself rather than fight, and then the doctor's mouth was stealing what little air he had, the sharp nose-piece of the helmet digging into Charles' skin as the telepath pushed at Shaw's chest with his burnt hand, mindless of that smaller pain in the face of all the others.

Try as he might, however, Charles couldn't pull his face from Shaw's, and what Shaw was doing wasn't really kissing him so much as assaulting him with lips and teeth. The doctor's pale blue eyes were open, staring into his intently, so Charles squeezed his own shut and sent out his thoughts.

_Erik, go_, he urged, as Shaw pulled at his shirt. _Just go, my friend. Turn away. Leave._

_._

_._

**xiv.**

_Leave,_ Charles' voice told Erik, but he could do no such thing. Instead, pressing his hands against the glass, Erik's eyebrows fell low over his eyes and his lips parted as he breathed shallowly through his mouth, watching as he failed yet another person he'd cared about.

_No,_ he thought back, _I can't leave you. I can't abandon you. I can't…_

_Erik, I can't hear you, I can barely tell you this, so listen to me: I'm telling you to go, now._ Charles' words were faint, as if they came from very far away, and Erik didn't understand how Charles could concentrate on talking to him while both trying to balance and push Shaw's hand off of his stomach.

He couldn't look away; he couldn't avert his eyes as Shaw assaulted his friend, and it was all his fault because he'd been too focused on revenge instead of just answering the damn _question_—

Erik closed his fist reflexively, seizing the sharp instruments still sitting on the counter inside, and they were just starting to rise up when Shaw's telepath hammered his mind with sensations of pain all over his body, a memory of being on a cold steel table, white light in his eyes, music playing—

"No!" Erik yelled, smashing his forehead into the glass. The window held, but the bruise was a small price to pay for a clear mind. Now he could hear Charles again, see him as he reached again for Shaw's helmet, earning a smack to the side of his face; he hung limp for a moment as Shaw fumbled for the telepath's belt one-handed.

Still, Charles maintained his litany, which was growing increasingly repetitive and, Erik suspected, reflexive: _Go, Erik, just go, go, not for me, don't stay for me…_

"God _dammit!_" Erik growled, striking at the door with his fist, fumbling with the door controls to no effect, hitting the door again just in case he hadn't done it hard enough the first time. He clung to his anger, because if he didn't, he'd have to admit that the noises coming from his mouth were quiet sobs, and that the cold trails on his reddening cheeks were from tears; not just because Charles was in there with Shaw, but because Erik couldn't _do_ anything; he hadn't been able to do anything then, and he wasn't able to do anything now, even after all the time he'd spent making sure that he _could_.

But… But no. He _had_ trained all of his adult life for this. He could do more than merely move the coin now.

He was just focusing on the wrong target.

Erik pulled away from the door, refusing to watch as Shaw tugged Charles' pants down his thighs, and turned his attention to Shaw's telepath. _Quiet, now, Charles,_ he thought, although he knew Charles couldn't hear him, could tell because Charles kept right on babbling in his head, still urging him to leave.

The diamond woman frowned a little as she met Erik's gaze, and his braced himself as he reached out a hand and started to pull at the gilded door.

The pain was immediate and greater than he'd predicted; still, Erik gritted his teeth and set his shoulders against it, matching her will for will.

Her serene distaste began to grow into real irritation, and she started digging up memories again; being taken away from his house as a boy, the hollowed cheeks at the concentration camp that had terrified him until he'd had a set to match, his mother being shot; Erik grimaced, choked in a breath past his locked teeth, and pulled harder.

He took heart from the flicker of fear that crossed the face of Shaw's telepath, surprised that she didn't shift into diamond form, but Erik's arm was growing weary, he hadn't exhaled in a while, and he could no longer hear Charles' voice.

Erik started to bow under the weight of her mind, staggering as his knees threatened to give way, and now he really _was_ starting to cry, if he hadn't already been before.

Then, as the woman began to relax her control, confident that she was winning, a shout broke into Erik's head: his own name, loud and desperate. Charles. Charles needed him to succeed.

This time, when he beckoned for the door, it came; the frosted glass exploded in a cloud around Shaw's telepath as the frame caught her head and feet, folding her slender form in half. She collapsed on the ground and didn't stir; Erik observed for a fraction of a second, but didn't waste the time to wonder whether she was alive or dead.

Instead, Erik walked back to Charles' prison, the door's metal already twisting under his will.

.

.

**xv.**

The mirrored glass shattered, and the prison's door slammed into its hidden alcove with enough force to ensure that it would never close again. Shaw froze, his expression perfectly blank as he met Erik's furious, dark-eyed stare. They were all very quiet for a moment as Erik stood in the doorway, accessing the situation.

Shaw, thankfully, was fully clothed; Erik hadn't really expected him to dirty himself, an expectation that was confirmed as the doctor let go of Charles's arm to remove the latex glove from his hand in one smooth, wrist-to-fingers movement, and drop it discreetly into a garbage bin inside out.

Charles, on the other hand, was _not_ fully clothed, and was blushing a vibrant red; his trousers were piled around his ankles, and he was doing his utmost best to pinch off Shaw's leg between his knees while working his boxers back up to his hips. Erik didn't look at him for long, accepting that the specifics were none of his business.

"Get off of him," he told Shaw, and the doctor seemed almost as surprised as Erik when he did so without hesitation.

Shaw regained his composure, then, and stepped so that Charles was between them. "I'll admit, I'm impressed," he said, straightening his coat. "You've progressed far from when last we met. Then again," he paused to glance meaningfully at Charles, "You've had some time for one-on-one training with a telepath since then."

Refusing to rise to Shaw's taunt, Erik caught Charles eye; he was now barely blushing at all, although it might have been because he'd succeeded in replacing his boxers. "Charles, you need to get out of the way."

Charles eyed the floor doubtfully. "I… I'm not sure if I can."

Erik nodded, and with a gesture, the table broke free of its podium and began to drift closer to him, Charles perched a little uneasily on one end, and—

—And then Shaw grabbed the table at its edge and threw it, stronger than Erik would have thought possible: strong enough to move something that Erik didn't want to be moved.

Charles tumbled as the sheet of metal flipped him off, and Erik lunged for him at the same time that he threw out a hand to deflect the table. The noise of it smashing into the wall was tremendously loud, drowning out the stricken noise Charles made as Erik caught him around the chest. The telepath's legs fumbled for the ground but didn't seem to be able to hold his weight, so Erik apologized to him silently and eased him to the floor in the corner of the room.

Erik retrieved the table and threw it back at Shaw with enough force to shatter all of his bones, but the doctor only seemed to _blur_ around it, and when his shape resolved again, he was holding the steel lightly between his hands, a small, satiated smile on his face.

_Erik, you can't hit him,_ Charles told him, not quite quickly enough. _He'll just absorb the kinetic energy and turn it back on you._

Nodding silently, Erik circled around the broken stump in the center of the room toward Shaw, who in turn began to maneuver the pedestal between them again; so Erik seized the metal within it, ripped it out of the way and used the pieces to lash out, to bind around the doctor's limbs with sharp edges. He twisted the table Shaw still held, wrapping it around the man's torso, crushing his arms to his body.

Only… Only then Shaw casually folded back what had once been the table, peeling it away from himself like a cocoon, absently plucking off the scraps Erik wound around his legs. Shaw tossed a piece of tortured steel aside, his expression bland and bored.

"Really, Erik, is this all you came to do? Fold me in a gentle embrace? I'm sure you could do far more than that. Try to hit me again; I'm sure it'll work this time," Shaw remarked, his voice slow and hypnotic.

Erik wasn't sure _what_ to do next; the doctor's suit was torn, ripped along the legs and arms, but he didn't even seem _hurt_.

_No,_ Charles' said, _look more closely. He's hiding it._ Erik did, and saw that yes, indeed, there was blood on the flashes of skin visible between the rents in the expensive fabric. He felt a flash of fury at the deception, but no, it was something he would have done in Shaw's place. He had learned from the bastard, after all.

Reassured that Shaw could be touched after all, Erik made a small gesture with the fingers at his side, drawing something up from his ankle, tucking it into his palm. "I'd rather not exert myself if I don't have to," Erik told the doctor, stalking forward.

Shaw narrowed his eyes, picked up the now unrecognizable table, and tossed it back at Charles; Erik caught it, easily, and was about to taunt Shaw about trying the same thing twice when the man punched him in the jaw and sent Erik flying.

He felt the mirrored wall crack behind his back, and his feet, for a moment, couldn't figure out the right direction to push in order to keep him upright. Then Shaw was on him, his hand wrapped under Erik's chin with just enough pressure to make it hard for Erik to catch his breath, pinning him to the wall.

"Are you ready to be done with this now?" Shaw asked, slamming Erik's head back into the glass to make his point. Erik heard the glass splintering, made an inarticulate gurgling noise that couldn't be mistaken for a reply, and scrabbled for Shaw's helmet.

Shaw leaned his head back and caught Erik's hands, one after the other, before he could do more than touch his shield. "Going to rely on your telepath to do your dirty work, Erik? I'm disappointed."

Erik smiled and slowed his struggles. "Shaw," he grunted, as the doctor loosened his grip around Erik's throat. "Remember the coin?"

Frowning, Shaw tilted his head. "What coin?"

"The one that started this all," Erik replied, surprised, despite himself, at the idea that the doctor might not have any specific memory of the event.

Annoyance flickered over Shaw's face. "Sure, the coin. What about it?"

"It's going to be different this time, _Herr Doktor._ I'm going to count to three…" He didn't quite have enough breath to finish the sentence, his neck still firmly within Shaw's grasp, but Erik grinned.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Shaw asked, his lip pulling into a sneer. In reply Erik only made a tiny gesture with one of his captured fingers, and Shaw froze.

"I slipped it into your helmet," Erik confides, and laughed as Shaw let him go to start scrabbling for the coin in the narrow space between his head and the smooth wall of the helmet.

Erik's laugh became sinister as he slipped the coin further up the curve of Shaw's skull, and began to drive the edge into his creator's skin. "_One._ Better not take off your helmet, Shaw, or Charles might get you," he mocked.

Shaw ceased trying to extract the coin and backhanded Erik instead, holding onto his arm so that Erik's face snapped to the side, but even though his teeth began to stain red, he couldn't stop grinning as the coin began to crack bone.

_Erik, Erik my friend, are you sure about this?_ Charles' insistent voice asked, but Erik ignored him, because he wouldn't have imagined this moment for all these years if he wasn't sure, and he needed all of his concentration to keep control as Shaw fought back.

"_Two._" Shaw's hand was burning, burning like a small sun, and it was getting very hard to keep that hand away from his face. Erik could feel his skin start to redden from the light alone, and Shaw, despite being scrawnier, was stronger because of his power.

Still, Erik couldn't help but smile, and he squinted past the searing light to watch Shaw's face as he slowly grew aware of the inevitability of his demise, as the coin passed into brain, where there were no nerves to sense pain. Erik's grip on Shaw's arm was growing weaker, and the skin of his face was growing uncomfortably hot, but he could see as the doctor's eyes began to go blank, as his muscles began to twitch out of control, and finally, as he stopped breathing, and the fire in his fingers dimmed.

"_Three,_" Erik whispered. He looked into Shaw's eyes and saw nothing—none of the cold intelligence, excitement, or casual brutality that marked the doctor for who he was—and the body that fell to the floor was limp, unremarkable without the mind of Sebastian Shaw to guide it.

Unable to do anything but stand and stare, to absorb the shock that no, this was _real_, Erik felt there was one more thing he had to do. He twitched his finger, and the Nazi coin—silver and smeared with blood—fell from Shaw's half-opened mouth, rolled down the inside of the helmet, and clattered onto the floor.

_Now_ it was over. Now Erik was free.

.

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**xvi.**

Charles watched as Erik studied Shaw's corpse, as flashes of triumph, relief, and old regret passed over his face. Charles thought he could have stopped Erik, should have stopped him, but… He wasn't sure how he felt about that at the moment. He wasn't sure how he felt about a lot of things, right then, but he would think about that some other time.

Erik turned to look at him, and the telepath froze; Erik's gaze was dark and hooded—dangerous—and some animal part of Charles wanted to shrink away and tend to his wounds elsewhere.

But then Erik's expression cleared, his eyes bright with concern as he moved to Charles' side with long, purposeful strides. He crouched down, his hands cupping Charles' shoulders. He appeared to be suffering from rather bad sunburn.

"Are you all right?" Erik asked. He searched Charles' face urgently, as if checking for Shaw's cancer metastasizing somewhere behind it.

Charles smiled weakly. "As well as to be expected," he confirmed, putting his undamaged hand on Erik's arm. "Could you help me up, my friend?"

Erik jumped into action, as if embarrassed that he hadn't offered first. "How—where can I lift you?" He closed his fingers over Charles' upper arm, tugging carefully, stopping when the telepath winced.

"Oh, just pick a spot, it all hurts," Charles recommended, before seeing how stricken Erik looked. "That's fine, though."

Nodding mutely, Erik braced his other hand against the better side of Charles' ribcage and pulled them both to their feet. Charles clung to his arm with vise-like fingers, his skin gone shockingly pale beneath his dark hair.

"Charles, I—"

The telepath knew without needing to read Erik's mind that he was trying to apologize for Shaw's actions. "You came back for me," Charles interrupted.

Erik stopped, his hands still on Charles, steadying him. "Of course," he replied, still wearing his unhappy frown. Erik paused, as if testing the words before he spoke them. "You're my only friend."

Charles smiled with every ounce of smug superiority he could scrounge up. "I'm your _best_ friend," he corrected proudly.

It had the desired effect; Erik made that noise he did sometimes, something that wasn't quite a chuckle, just a soft puff of air that always made Charles suspect that Erik was wondering how he managed to eat without swallowing his own tongue. Erik's lips curled up at the edges and he pulled Charles into a tentative, gentle embrace, locking the telepath in with his chin.

Charles inhaled the smell of leather, pressing his better hand very lightly against Erik's back and appreciating the hug for its human comfort, but also because he knew it had been a very long time since Erik had done any such thing.

Still, Charles felt the beginnings of a somewhat hysterical laugh stirring in his chest, and he knew it was a bad idea to start laughing—that it would hurt, and also that Erik would probably misinterpret it—but he couldn't help it. He was standing in a prison made of mirrors near the corpse of a deranged madman, being embraced by a professional Nazi-killer who could move metal with his mind, and Charles was… Was…

Despite his best efforts, Charles began to laugh in soft little bursts, and he couldn't stop, even when Erik pulled away and examined him from arm's length with wide, uneasy eyes. Charles realized that Erik had thought he was sobbing, so he gave the man a quick, reassuring smile as he tried to calm himself, slowing to the pace of pained gasps.

"What's wrong?" Erik asked, and it occurred to Charles that if he _had_ been crying, Erik would have had no idea what to do about it.

"Nothing," Charles managed to say. "It's just that, all of this—" Charles indicated the room as a whole "—and I, and I'm…" He lowered his voice to a level reserved for important secrets. "Erik, I'm not wearing _pants_!"

Erik blinked, and parted his lips, confused, glancing down at Charles' thin, bruised legs, and the trousers still tangling his feet. "Well, why didn't you pull them up?"

"I can't," Charles confessed morosely. "My ribs hurt."

"You ribs—?" Frowning, Erik stared at him for several seconds before, gradually, the edges of a smile appeared on his face, and as it became a grin he hung his head, shaking it as he laughed, slow and careful noises as if Erik wasn't entirely sure what his mouth was doing and didn't want to break anything.

"You're ridiculous," he accused the telepath, brushing a bit of glass out of Charles' hair.

Charles shuffled awkwardly, not entirely opposed to being the butt of a joke if it was one Erik laughed at. "Yes, well," he acknowledged grudgingly, and fell silent.

Erik then proved that he was a true friend by helping Charles get his trousers back on.

.

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**xvii.**

They were riding in a plane, and they were alone.

Erik was the one flying the craft; he had one hand hooked on the wheel and his feet touched the pedals, but he controlled their flight with his mind and the movements of the equipment seemed almost incidental, as if the plane piloted itself.

Erik's other arm was draped around Charles, his hand cradling the telepath's elbow, keeping him tight to his side as gusts of wind occasionally set the plane to rattling. Charles seemed to be asleep, eyes closed and head tucked into Erik's armpit, wearing Erik's jacket.

It looked a little absurd on Charles, as he'd protested when Erik had insisted he wear it, but it was cold up in the sky, and while Erik didn't quite feel warm in his turtleneck, he also didn't have to worry about stressing an already-compromised immune system, and anyway Charles radiated heat beside him.

His friend's hand emerged from one sleeve bandaged stark white; another of Erik's triumphs over Charles' insistence to leave as fast as possible. His other injuries would have to wait until they landed.

Making it out of Shaw's facility had been easy with Charles in tow, making sure they weren't noticed. Shaw's telepath was nowhere to be seen, having evidently lived, but she made no effort to stop them. By the time they'd reached the hanger, however, Charles was starting to drift off, and neither of them noticed the pilot until he was right there, gaping at them.

Erik had picked up a chair behind the man, prepared to flatten him if he decided to stop them, but the pilot had been more shaken by Charles' appearance than Erik's threatening scowl, and had let them go with an assurance that Erik knew how to fly and a simple promise to leave the plane in the same airfield they'd departed from hours ago. Erik had eyed him with suspicion, expecting a trap, but the pilot had only observed as Erik started the plane's engine without a key and deposited Charles inside.

He had actually never piloted anything himself, before, but the craft was almost like an extension of Erik's body; it was as close he would ever get to human flight as he supervised a thousand tiny corrections in the angles of the flaps along the wings and tail, keeping their path as smooth as possible as he followed the faint trail of the Earth's magnetic field.

Erik began to caution himself not to enjoy it too much; that he was too busy to take pleasure in something so superfluous, except… Except Shaw was dead now, and the coin he'd carried for so many years had dropped to the floor with him. Erik _could_ do things like fly planes, if he wanted, or stay with Charles and the others and start a school. For a moment he toyed with the idea of asking Hank if he'd build a plane for Erik, or modify one, or—

"It's nice up here," Charles murmured beneath the drone of the engine. Erik glanced down at him, surprised, having thought Charles asleep, and then looked out around them.

The sun had started to set, round and red on the horizon. The clouds were sharp, ragged contrasts of deep purple and brilliant orange, and far below them the ground was a mosaic of black and gold, undulating and uncivilized.

"It is," Erik agreed, turning back to Charles; but Charles' eyes were closed, had been closed the whole time, and he'd never once looked outside the cockpit.

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_end_

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End file.
